


a father's thoughts

by katotastic000



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Homophobia, M/M, SO HE OVERTHINKS HIS BELIEFS, SO OF COURSE HE DOESN'T WANT TO HURT HIS SON, also very light mentions of abuse, bUT TAKAAKI IS A GOOD FATHER, ishimondo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26327377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katotastic000/pseuds/katotastic000
Summary: Takaaki notices that his son is in love before he does.
Relationships: Ishimaru Kiyotaka/Oowada Mondo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 247





	a father's thoughts

It was a relief to hold his son in his arms again. He was just coming over for the weekend, the monthly procedure of visiting the parents (monthly was eeringly often compared to himself in his younger years, so much so that it seemed like time went by faster) but for Takaaki, every visit felt like his son was returning from war, safe and alive, ready for the next battle. He could explain that feeling if someone asked but he chose not to think about it in too much depth.

"Good to see you," he said after they broke up the embrace. "It is good to see you as well, father!" Kiyotaka beamed down at him. Takaaki punched the first vines of envy down his throat. His son was wearing just a plain white shirt and black pants but those were worthier of being called "clothing" than what poverty had forced Taka to wear before he moved out, during the time Takaaki raised him. His face was strong now and filled with life. He could even afford glasses which Takaaki needed since he was thirty-five.

His son was doing overwhelmingly great without him: healthy outlook, stable finances, a safe place at university. Takaaki handled that with pride rather than hurt.

Kiyotaka had to press against the wall to fit through the hallway next to his father. It didn't seem to bother him much and he walked into the living room of the apartment that Takaaki secretly called his hamster cage.

Kiyotaka had already promised him a new place to live, whether it was another apartment or an entire house. As soon as he had taken, washed and made his name anew in politics, there would be no wish that he wasn't able to fulfill.

Takaaki thought of an old, fat king being carried to the tomb by his slaves. He was his son's father, not the bag of stones labeled "Ishimaru" that was tied to his ankle.

After Kiyotaka had gone, all that was left in the hallway were Takaaki and - leaning from one foot to another, gnawing on the inside of his cheek, hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket, eyes inspecting the burst paint on the walls - Mondo, his son's boyfriend.

Takaaki couldn't blame him. He knew how that felt, the awkward Mexican stand-off with your partner's father, especially because their relationship started out eleven years ago as guard and inmate in juvenile prison. But that boy was almost twenty-five, he should get over it. Takaaki turned his smirk inside, _not when I think of him as" boy."_

Mondo looked up when Takaaki stepped closer. He had drawn on that silly eyeliner once again, the older man noticed. It was working, he realized, seeing make-up in stores made him think of his squinting, a mix of annoyance and confusion.

Takaaki extended his hand. "It's nice to see you, too." "Yeah," Mondo nodded and returned the handshake. On the scale of casual to firm, it slid a little too far towards firm, though what else did Takaaki expect from a man of his build? "Thanks for lettin' me come over with him." Takaaki pressed his lips together in a straight smile. "Of course."

It was the fifth time the two came over as boyfriends and Takaaki was slowly but steadily gliding towards a state of plain acceptance. However, occasionally he caught himself staring at them when they kissed and his head snapped up when Mondo called his son "babe." He turned away the next second, reminding himself that they were not some foreign street artists that moved for art and money but living, breathing, loving beings that he counted into his family. For his son, Takaaki tried.

Their relationship introduced so many questions to his life that Takaaki would never have the courage to ask. What would be if his son had announced a girlfriend to him? Would Takaaki still be staring at them? Was it not because he was not used to seeing his son kiss a man but because he was not used to his son kissing anyone at all? When the time comes, would there be grandchildren running about his property? Would they be their own? Would he live long enough to see that happen? If Kiyotaka had told his father himself, if it had been his own conscious decision to tell him that he was gay, what would Takaaki have done with him?

Takaaki's intestines tied a knot when he noticed. Kiyotaka was over for the weekend, alone because Takaaki and Mondo in any combination never worked out. It was summer and Takaaki remembered the smell of nicotine and twice reheated microwave meals coming from downstairs to invade his living room but he couldn't close the windows, he couldn't move at all because the realization and all that was attached to its anchor held him in place: Someone had gotten hold of his son's heart. His best friend. Another man. _Dear God, what has that criminal done to him?_

All that Kiyotaka had been doing was show Takaaki photos of two chairs and an unfinished table and inform him that Mondo had been taken as an apprentice at the local carpentry.

The way his words flowed out of his mouth like a silk cascade, how his lips formed a smile around every single syllable, how his eyes gleamed like a light of their own, how tears pricked in his eyes as he told his father that he could not put his pride into words.

It was inevitable. Takaaki always knew that this day would come but he painted the thoughts of it black, so that none of it could shine through:

"He handles his matters his own way, young, inexperienced, adventurous." "Kiyotaka has always been strange, it's his form of 'ordinary.'" "He's just happy, let him be."

Takaaki had grown tired of painting, he could see the bottom of the bucket. _Enough._

This wasn't normal anymore. How would his son find someone else, find a "wife", if that criminal's claws had a grip on him? How would he experience freedom if that thug stalked him everywhere he went? How would he feel love if that delinquent shut him away from it?

For a single time, Takaaki let the thoughts shine through, let himself submerge in their horror, the gruesome confirmation that he was right. What must that criminal, that _monster_ , have done to him? Or rather, what was still to come? Had he already emptied his son's generosity with his desire for materialism, the leather, the wood, the eyeliner? Had he already crushed his son's faith with his drive of aggression, the cruelty and the barbarism? Had he already bruised his son's innocence to quench his lust for the wrong?

"And do you know, father?" Kiyotaka said. He returned to his phone's homescreen and took a second to regard his background, a picture of them; Kiyotaka wasn't the one who took it, he was leaning on the other's chest, grinning up to the camera. His voice was soft, like a whisper and a hum, and strange, like Takaaki had been deaf for it up until now. "He promised to build us a house someday."

Takaaki found no sleep that night.

His son's words and the absolute contradiction they beared kept him tossing and turning, kept his eyes open. The question he was asking himself was not "What has that criminal done to him?" but "What has Kiyotaka done to that criminal?"

Takaaki firmly believed that all the deliquent's promises were lies, or rather he firmly held on to the wish to keep this belief. He had discovered today that it was possible to stab yourself in the back. Takaaki had gotten to know him as the member and later leader of an immature revolt and then when he appeared in his life again, it was as the constructor of his son's house.

It was not the loose promise of "I'll be on time" or "I won't forget", it was a promise you don't make twice. And a familiar promise. It was the "You have everything but let me give you more" that Takaaki vowed to his wife, but reimagined; smaller, more intimate, intuitively fitted to his son's wishes and easier to fulfill. Takaaki had given his wife a drive of a cliff, from wealth to restless penny-pinching, from charity to work, to ultimately death. Mondo would give his son a home, from poverty to property, from solitude to-

Takaaki closed his eyes when he realized. What his wife had been to him, that was his son to Mondo. They were different, but not in their promises.

The paint was refilled and the old trim brush with the prickling, protuding bristles in his hand was replaced with a calligraphy quill.

Not criminal, but carpenter. Not thug, but a friend. Not delinquent, but a man. Not monster, but someone that promised his son a house and to be beside him long enough to build it, to own it, to live in it and grow old. Mondo loved him.

"Kiyotaka?" Takaaki had been successfully scheduling this talk further back all weekend, trying to ban it to the back of his head because dealing with the thoughts of it was just empty circulating. But now it was Sunday and his son would be leaving in an hour sharp like he always did. One final talk over their finished dinner.

Takaaki folded his hands in his lap. His son looked up. "Is there anything you might want to tell me? Regarding your, well, companionship, I mean." Kiyotaka furrowed his brows. "I don't think there is anything unusual."

The hundreds of layers of paint had dried over time but instead of becoming crusty and falling off, they became sticky like old rubber. The paint with which Takaaki had shrouded the truth and hid a shade of his son from himself, held a certain weight that he carried resignedly.

"Don't hold back. I just want you to be honest with me." Takaaki attempted a smile, quick to come, quick to go, and tired as always. He tried to blank out the sweat that started to collect inbetween his fingers. He shifted in his chair.

"I really do not know what you want from me, father." Kiyotaka's voice had become shaky and desperate. His mouth was twisted into a forced smile, an expression Takaaki knew as well as the back of his hand

Takaaki swallowed, his pride, his shame, his fear. "Do-" His tongue refused the order. He sighed. He had done an awful job with that old, ugly brush and all the pain that he blacked out now showed its frowning face, demanding him to fix his job. "Kiyotaka, do you love him?"

"Do I love him?" Kiyotaka repeated the question, to his father, then to himself. "Do I love _him_? Him?" He felt for his chest. "Mondo?"

Kiyotaka formed a silent "Oh" with his lips. As if a lit match was thrown into a line of gasoline, deep red blush spread from his cheeks to his ears. Again, now audible, "Oh." His hands found their way to his face, to confirm that he looked as hot as he felt. "Father, I-"

In this moment, Takaaki didn't think about who or why or the consequences, just _So that's the way my son is in love_.

Kiyotaka cleared his throat and gained no composure out of it. He stood up, Takaaki's eyes following him. "I have to make a phone call," he announced as firmly as he could under the current circumstances. "Please excuse me."

It wasn't always easy. Takaaki voiced his concerns about Kiyotaka's political career without thinking of the power of his words, that they meant he was living in an old version of the world. He exposed himself as prejudiced, thinking that you could tell by his eyeliner that Mondo was gay. He noticed that his field of view was even smaller than a keyhole when Kiyotaka corrected him that Mondo was bisexual and a lump formed in Takaaki's throat whenever he was about to look it up. When Mondo offered him a truce by asking if he needed someone to fix the leaky faucet or the broken stovetop, Takaaki declined with a wrinkled nose and asked himself later why he didn't want Mondo's fingerprints on his belongings.

However, it seemed normal for them. Kiyotaka smiled up to Mondo and Takaaki spotted that he had tamed the fountain of emotions and knew to use it like a charm. Mondo's hand fit around Kiyotaka's so easily and for a second, Takaaki saw a man in him, grown to peace with his faults. Their lips connected like they were formed with this plan in mind and when they broke the kiss and turned to Takaaki, catching him staring, he smiled.

Mondo broke the handshake first. Takaaki considered for a moment, observing him, aged out of his teenage rebellion, his rudeness and the ridiculous hairstyle. He shrugged. "Ah, come here, boy." Takaaki pulled Mondo into a hug.

Takaaki confirmed their height difference, his nose barely reached Mondo's shoulder and Mondo had to bent down to match him. He caught a strong whiff of perfume and made the effort not to cough. Takaaki gave him a simple clap on the back with an intention unknown to him, Mondo returned the favor with unnecessary force that shoved the air out of Takaaki's lungs and they split.

Takaaki tried his hardest to stand his ground. Luckily, Mondo looked a little lost as well. His mouth curled into an uncertain smile, his eyes had lost themselves on the wall again and his hair was coiling around his finger. Takaaki decided that he should keep calling him "boy" for a while longer.

"Well," He cleared his throat. "We shouldn't let him wait. Come in."


End file.
